It is an easy mistake to make. Just because someone was a brilliant football player he will therefore make a brilliant football administrator, right? Wrong, actually, and wrong on a grand scale like assuming Morrissey would make a first-class psychiatrist because he wrote some insightful songs about the human condition.

Michel Platini was the Morrissey of footballers. Sadly he has been the James Blunt of football administrators — not in the sense that he has been soppy and criminally middle-of-the-road but simply that he has been rubbish.

The Frenchman's transformation from the playing field to the president's office at Uefa has seen him exchange the magical for the hair-brained, the visionary for the expedient. No one could accuse him of indolence — barely a day passes without him floating some daft idea on the future of the game — but with every passing utterance it becomes more apparent that, wherever Platini stands on the issue of the day, common sense must inevitably be lined up on the other side.

His latest intervention, on the subject of the government's lobbying in support of proposals for a combined Great Britain and Northern Ireland team at the 2012 Olympics, confirms this suspicion. "Any time a government exerts pressure on national associations, that is viewed by Uefa as interference. Interference is unacceptable, which is why we fight attempts by governments to influence associations," he said. "This is a complicated problem but there has never been a Great Britain football team and I know from [Uefa general secretary and former Scottish Football Association employee] David Taylor the strength of the SFA's opposition."

The timing of Platini's intervention was significant, coming as it did on the launch day of a ludicrous campaign calling itself Save Scottish Football. From what, one has to ask: Hopeless referees? Incompetent administrators? The Old Firm's permanent and tedious hegemony?

Needless to say, the answer is none of the above. Instead we are being asked to believe the one thing Scottish football requires saving from is the prospect of a GB and NI team at the 2012 Games.

The former Scotland manager Craig Brown is the front man for Save Scottish Football but the "brains" of the outfit is a Scottish Nationalist Party politician called Christine Grahame, who appears to believe that giving women footballers from Scotland the chance to play on the world's biggest stage for a gold medal is a bad idea.

"The threat posed by the creation of a GB football team goes way beyond football. No one, bar a handful of politically motivated zealots in London, wants a GB football team — precisely because they recognise the huge threat this poses," Grahame says.

The "huge threat" referred to by Grahame and others of her ilk is the notion that Fifa would use the creation of a combined team in 2012 to force through the abolition of the four home national associations and, with that, the four home national teams. This brings us back to the "political interference" Platini found so objectionable.

For the last few months the government minister Jim Murphy has lobbied Fifa and received written assurances from the game's governing body that it would not seek to merge the home nations after 2012. He conveyed these assurances to the Scottish FA, as well as other opponents of the idea, and much good it did him and his cause.

"Despite Fifa's assurances this would not be binding for the future. Changes would be made at Fifa. There would be a new president and new committee — and they could make changes," said Brown.

No doubt Brown's objections are genuine but they fail to take into account the fact that, if Fifa is duplicitous enough to ignore its own written promises, and determined enough to abolish the four home associations, then it will simply go ahead and do it, whether a GB and NI team plays in London 2012 or not.

All of us are capable of denying the obvious, especially when we have another agenda. In this instance Ms Grahame has another agenda, which is to use Scottish football to further the political cause of Scottish nationalism. In this she is joined by her political boss, Alex Salmond, who had this to say on the subject of a combined team: "To jeopardise the entire future of Scottish international football on the basis of an undertaking from one official, at one point in time, I think is daft. And all for participation in an under-23 tournament of a few players."

Salmond, for those whose knowledge of affairs north of the border is deficient, is Scotland's first minister, which by any sensible interpretation renders his intervention "political interference". Presumably we can expect President Platini to condemn such behaviour before the day's end, unless of course, he is too busy concocting his next daft idea for changing the face of football.

Sense may have removed Ince but race issue remains

Paul Ince may have been mocked for painting himself as a victim of a conspiracy but like most people who have been in football for a long time he had plenty of enemies, some of whom have taken an unnecessary amount of pleasure in his demise as Blackburn's manager.

The panic threshold is low in the Premier League and by established standards the performances of Ince's squad would have prompted a few chairmen to seek a replacement. He was a victim of results and nothing else is the general view. No doubt this is the case but, as Ince departs to spend more time with his golf clubs, his demise should not be seen as a rebuke to those who have fought for more black representation at the highest levels.

Football in this country has had an atrocious record on minority representation within management. It still does. "This shouldn't spell another lengthy period where we see no British black managers at the top level," Lord Ouseley, the former head of the Commission for Racial Equality, said when told the Premier League's first black manager had been fired after Ince's sacking. I hope it won't but I fear it will.

Stanford offers a salutary lesson

A word of thanks is due to Allen Stanford, whose contribution to cricket extends far beyond the $20m he handed over at the end of his ludicrous exhibition match a couple of months ago. Money is good but knowledge is much more precious and, as the financier ponders his future interest in the game, it is comforting to know that, whatever he decides, the English Cricket Board will know the folly of selling its soul to the next publicity-seeking billionaire who proclaims himself the saviour of the game.

Caddie deserves to carry the can more than the bag

Just when you think there is nothing left to say on Steve Williams' comments about Phil Mickelson, along comes the suggestion that Tiger Woods' loquacious caddie is somehow the victim in all this.

Apparently Williams was abused by the Taranaki Daily News reporter who reported remarks he made at a "private" charity function in New Plymouth. This argument would be a little stronger if the charity function had actually been private - it was public - and if the aforementioned reporter had not approached Williams after the event and informed the caddie he had taken notes - he did and the caddie indicated he had no problem with that.

Equally it is difficult to fathom how Williams' privacy was breached when, asked the next day to confirm the accuracy of the original report, he not only did so but he expanded on his dislike of Mickelson. Steve Williams as a victim? Only of his own hubris perhaps.